Gaza City

Gaza City is a city in the Gaza Strip region of Palestine, settled in the 14th century BC. Under the Roman Empire and the Byzantine Empire, the port of Gaza flourished, and the city became a center of Islamic law in 635 after the Rashidun Caliphate conquered it; it was the first Palestinian city to fall to the Muslims. The city was reduced to a village from the 1000s to the 1500s by crusader assaults, Mongol raids, floods, and locusts, but a municipality was established by the Ottomans in 1893. After World War I, Gaza became a part of Mandatory Palestine, and Egypt occupied the city after the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, leading to the creation of the "Gaza Strip" as a separate entity from the rest of the Israel-Palestine region. In 1967, Israel captured Gaza, only to hand it over to Palestine in 1993. In 2006, the Islamist Hamas group seized power in the city, ousting the secular Fatah group, leading to an Israeli blockade and armed conflict (especially rocket attacks) between Hamas and Israel. In 2012, Gaza had a population of 515,556 people, with 99.994% being Muslims and .006% Christians; 75% of the population was under the age of 25.